This blog attempts to cause people to begin thinking more deeply about the philosophy and ethics of food.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

A Precious Honor

My family has been working with the producers of ThinkTV, a PBS station that airs out of Dayton Ohio, to produce a 30 minute documentary centered around a farm family. The show will be featured on the "Our Ohio" show that airs weekly sometime this fall.

We see this as a great honor to be chosen for this production. We did not apply. We did not recommend ourselves. The show found us. Through our activities in promoting agriculture and being involved in some of the current issues faced by the farm community our family's story found its way to ThinkTV and grabbed the producer's interest.

I am not shy about pointing out the connections between my Christian beliefs and how life seems to play out accordingly. I considered it an unusual honor when the producer, Richard Wonderling, asked if it would be possible to record my family at a church service. The fact that he perceived church, my family's faith, to be central to the telling of who the Wildman family is, was a great compliment.

It is very easy to forget in the daily living of our life that we are communicating much larger truths to those around us. In my gloomy moments, I question whether the hours, days, and years spent doing the mundane things of raising a family are really speaking to my children and community. I have such a vivid understanding of all the things I have done wrong and what a sinful father and husband I am. As I have listened to my children tell their story's this week to a camera, under the lights, with a microphone stuck in their face, I have shed tears of pride. Tears of pride because I can hear those things I and my wife have prayed for and worked so hard for, being reflected in the daily activities and lives of our children. Somehow the message I wanted my children to hear has found its way into their hearts.

I openly confess that the honor of representing an Ohio farm family on a television show appeals to my personal ego. To be selected from among the many qualified family's with great stories is a marvelous honor. But the joy of listening to and hearing my children reflect the messages my wife and I have tried to teach has been the greatest, most humbling, and precious of honors.

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About Me

I raise pigs, corn and soybeans in S. Western Ohio. I have four children that represent the seventh generation on this farm. My hope is to communicate something of our life and thought to the reader and to foster discussion and thought.